At least it seems to me that I’m finding more that I can wholeheartedly agree with among the writings of the deceased than among the ceaseless, ever more superficial and pseudo-intelligent babble of the large bulk of my contemporaries.

But then it’s hard to come across minds even remotely comparable to some of those who dared to make a difference in the decades and centuries gone by – minds like that of Malcolm Muggeridge, whom I only recently discovered and find out I’m having more in common with than most of my living acquaintances.

I doubt, for instance, if I would find among the living anyone able to put into words as appropriately and eloquently my very own opinion on the topic of education as he did in his book “Jesus Rediscovered:”

“Education, the great mumbo-jumbo and fraud of the age, purports to equip us to live, and is prescribed as a universal remedy for everything, from juvenile delinquency to premature senility. For the most part, it only serves to enlarge stupidity, inflate conceit, enhance credulity and put those subjected to it, at the mercy of brain-washers with printing presses, radio and television at their disposal.”

“The most powerful instrument of all in bringing about the erosion of our civilization was none other than the public education system set up with such high hopes and at so great expense precisely to sustain it.”

— Or on the topic of science:

“We are perfectly capable of believing other things intrinsically as improbable as Christ’s incarnation. Towards any kind of scientific mumbojumbo we display a credulity which must be the envy of African witch-doctors. While we shy away with contumely from the account of the creation in the Book of Genesis, we are probably ready to assent to any rigmarole by a Professor Hoyle about how matter came to be, provided it is dished up in the requisite jargon and associated, however obliquely, with what we conceive to be ‘facts’.

I suppose every age has its own particular fantasy. Ours is science. A seventeenth-century man like Pascal, though himself a mathematician and scientist of genius, found it quite ridiculous that anyone should suppose that rational processes could lead to any ultimate conclusions about life, but easily accepted the authority of the Scriptures. With us it is the other way round.”

“Professing Christians and ostensibly Christian societies and institutions have by no means been true to the cross and what it signified, especially today when the nominally Christian part of the world is foremost in worship of the Gross National Product—our Golden Calf—and in pursuit of happiness in the guise of sensual pleasure. Yet there the cross still is, propounding its unmistakable denunciation of this world and of the things of this world.”

The way I came across my new heavenly friend was by means of one of his quotes on evolution, to which, of course, I also couldn’t agree more:

“I myself am convinced that the theory of evolution, especially the extent to which it’s been applied, will be one of the great jokes in the history books in the future. Posterity will marvel that so very flimsy and dubious an hypothesis could be accepted with the incredible credulity that it has. I think I spoke to you before about this age as one of the most credulous in history, and I would include evolution as an example.”

Since there are such wonderful aspects awaiting someone like me in the afterlife, of finally actually meeting folks on the same weird wavelength as mine, I can only agree with his following statement as well:

“As I do not believe that earthly life can bring any lasting satisfaction, the prospect of

death holds no terrors.“

To round off this train of thoughts, I’ll end this with a quote from wee little me:

When even that which is considered the worst that can possibly happen to a person – death – turns out to actually be the best that can possibly happen, then what is there to fear? What is there to lose?(April 20, 2008)

—

“That through death He might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; and deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage” (Hebrews 2:14, 15).

One of the pre-eminent ways which shows to what extent the Devil has turned this world upside down, and our twisted perception of things, is that the majority of people actually believe that just because mankind was allowed to have some technological breakthroughs over the past few centuries, that they have “evolved” and developed into something better than their forefathers. Of course, it’s easy to believe that if you’ve been brainwashed to believe that your forefathers resembled gorillas.

If you have a look at the biblical portrait of our forefathers, however, you’ll find – among the many mistakes we all make – more nobility, character and true values there than in any society or nation presently on earth. Even if our knowledge may have increased, it is what you do with that knowledge what matters, and if “by their fruits ye shall know them,” then for all the misery and pain our knowledge has resulted in, I wonder if we’re truly better off than our predecessors, or if perhaps in some aspects, “ignorance is bliss” after all.

A good illustration of this is our modern fruits and vegetables: They may look good on the outside, artificially beefed up and genetically enhanced to look like their plastic counterparts in furniture stores, but did you know that our modern, “evolved” fruits and vegetables have actually lost some of their original nutrition value? When it comes to nutritives, minerals, vitamins and all those things that really count, more than mere looks, our modern and technologically enhanced produce doesn’t cut the cake.

How true that is of people. You can buy yourself a new nose, a whole new face, or a different color of skin, a whole new set of teeth, have the fat in your butts sucked off and re-injected into your lips, so that even a 75-year old can still resemble a flawless barbie, but you cannot possibly inject real happiness (or moral values) into their souls. The glimpse into the mirror that thankfully lies at you and hides your true age may give you a temporary shot of satisfaction, compared to a shot of whishy or heroin, but you can’t buy true happiness with lies.

True, our forefathers may have looked not quite as glamorous, and neither did their veggies and fruits, and they may have had to do a lot of manual work and not have been able to enjoy the crowning achievent of technological evolution in fingering a remote control, but I defy anyone who tries to tell me that we are happier today than they were. And our modern, “evolved” suicide rates prove it.

Let’s face it: life sucks when you constantly kid yourself into thinking that you’re the cream of the crop, when in reality you can’t even hold a candle to one single, honest, hard-working 19th century coal miner, much less one of the Early Christians who suffered severe persecution for the first 3 centuries of Christendom, or some of the earlier patriarchs.

The only human quality that has truly evolved into unprecedented proportions is pride, which has been inflated just like our modern paper currencies. Coming to think of it: this whole System is just one huge, colorful, pretty-on-the-outside balloon with nothing on the inside but hot air, and utterly unprepared for its first rendez-vous with a sharp rock…